Uncategorized

The events at Charlottesville has conjured stronger emotions than I have seen in a very long time. But once again, I am a cautious skeptic to the urgency for outrage over this entire event.

My social media feed has been full of my fellow Seattleites in utter outrage over White Nationalists marching. And, as usual, it’s much easier to sit on Facebook and point fingers at others rather than reflecting one’s own community.

The reason for organizing the march was to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate General during the American Civil War. I think the topic of removing statues and other symbols of hate and violence from our history is a complicated one. One that I am not going to touch in this post. I will, however, discuss the consistent problem of our society today: we readily throw stones from our glass house.

As all of Seattle is outraged over the protests in Charlottesville, enough outrage to form a march against hate this past Sunday, with three more planned this upcoming week. And yet, to my surprise, not one march has been organized to protest the statue of Vladimir Lenin that has been erect in Fremont for more than 20 years. Lenin was responsible for the brutal execution of thousands of his own people and as many as 1.5 million Russians died in connection to the violence and oppression in The Soviet Union during his rule. Even more, Lenin was soulless. A Letter archived at the Library of Congress exemplifies this in a letter Lenin wrote to the Penza Communists:

Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost’s must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle “with the kulaks.”

We need to set an example.

1) You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public
sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the
bloodsuckers.
2) Publish their names.
3) Take away all of their grain.
4) Execute the hostages – in accordance with yesterday’s
telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for
hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let’s choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.

Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.

Yours, Lenin

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.

There’s no doubt about it. Lenin was the definition of evil. And yet, as we cry foul over the statue of a much more complicated character in history, this genocidal murderer stays up in our city without threat. Seattle, it’s time we start looking in the mirror before pointing blame at others.

Search…

About

I live in Seattle. I care about our future. I read and write about the politics that are rapidly changing the makeup of our city, hoping to contribute some thoughts of value.